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Comment by freyr | Hacker News Reader

> I wonder how much impact this will have.

What were the consequences when Uber management was caught behaving badly in the past?

In November 2014, Uber’s senior vice president Emil Michael suggested Uber hire a team of opposition researchers—equipped with a million-dollar budget—to dig into the personal lives of journalists who reported negatively about the company in order to dox, target and harass them and their families. One of his main targets was Pando founder and editor-in-chief Sarah Lacey, who had reported on the company’s sexist and misogynistic ways. Further proving her point, Mr. Michael said he thought Ms. Lacy should be held “personally responsible” if passengers who head Ms. Lacey’s advice and stop using Uber are sexually assaults by taxi drivers. Mr. Kalanick apologized on behalf of the company, but Mr. Michael didn’t lose his position.

Well, there's your answer.

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What actually happened: "Emil was pushing Ben to answer why it was OK for journalists to publish false stories or attack a businessperson’s personal life. Ben was quiet. It was a pretty normal conversation about hypotheticals. There was no malice or yelling or fighting. It was a chat between the two of them that I happened to overhear. The last comment that I heard was when Emil hypothesized about creating a coalition for responsible journalism. Ben said that would likely fail because companies have no expertise in journalism. Emil flippantly said he could hire professional journalists for $1 million to get the expertise to make sure that they could respond when negative articles come out."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicole-campbell/what-was-said-...

Since when is discussing a philosophical hypothetical "behaving badly"?

And again, the actual hypothetical is worth answering. Suppose Emil did, in fact, drop $1M on hiring journalists to do journalism to other journalists. Why is it "behaving badly" if Uber does journalism, but not if Techcrunch or Gawker does?

If you are hired by a corporation to respond to journalists, you are in PR, not journalism. You're not motivated by the truth.

The actual idea was to hire researchers and journalists to dig up dirt in the personal lives of critical journalists, not merely to respond to them.

Since when is journalism motivated by the truth?

HuffPo should be disqualified as a source regarding Uber. As stated in the NYT piece, Arianna Huffington is on Uber's board. She has a clear interest in shining as positive a light as possible on Uber at all times.

Ask yourself which journalists have A16Z or Andreessen himself as investors, who are also among the biggest investors in Lyft. This is an exercise left up to the reader.

There is no journalism in Silicon Valley. Everything is PR. As Doerr said "No conflict, no interest."

In this light, Susan Rigetti seems to have published a solid piece of personal journalism.

Ok. Lets imagine Emil actually did exactly as described in his hypothetical: hiring people to investigate true facts and report them to the public.

How is that somehow worse than Gawker hiring people to do that to Uber?

When those "true facts" are the personal details of journalists and their families, researched and published specifically to make them fear for their safety.

If you think that maliciously doxing people is perfectly fine as long as the dox are true facts, then you are a being a troll. If I have misunderstood your point, then I apologise and would appreciate clarification.

Doxing refers to identifying anonymous writers on the internet. So I'm not sure what you are referring to - Emil Michael was discussing reporting true but embarrassing personal facts about (public figure) Sarah Lacy.

Specifically, the idea was to write articles like these, but with Sarah Lacy (founder of Pando) as the subject:

https://pando.com/2014/02/27/we-call-that-boob-er-the-four-m...

https://pando.com/2014/10/06/venture-capital-and-the-great-b...

So yes, my concrete question is why it's wrong to write the 4 most awful true things about Sarah Lacy, but it's perfectly fine to write the 4 most awful true facts about Travis Kalanick?

No, the idea was to dig up private information about people in retaliation for them doing their jobs because the things they write don't reflect well on Uber.

The first article there is taking a public PR interview that someone chose to give and copy pasting it. He should be thanking Pando for it, they are simply repeating quotes he intentionally gave to the public with a little bit of editorializing.

The second one is downright nasty I agree, except for the entire section on Uber which is totally fine. Just quotes that Kalanick gave to the news media and the public willingly speaking as CEO of his company (NOT dredged out of his personal life) and 'information' about their business practices and NOT about the personal, private life of anyone. It also outlines illegal business practices, a culture of disregard for customer safety, disrespect for drivers, etc. Something Uber customers (and shareholders) have a right to know about but that Uber certainly won't tell them.

Quoting leaked personal emails is nasty. There's a line between private and public and exposing someone's private life because you don't like what they're doing in their public life is what's so disgusting and beyond the pale. Pando certainly does exactly that (they did it to Evan Spiegel in the article you linked), you could even say their entire business model is based on being scummy but that doesn't mean it's alright for Uber to. In fact it's much worse for Uber to. I don't trust Pando with personal information about my comings and goings (or trust them at all, with anything) or let them install an app on my phone with permissions. Pando doesn't forcibly alter the laws in every governmental jurisdiction it touches to favor their business. It's a huge difference of scale.

No, the idea was to dig up private information about people in retaliation for them doing their jobs because the things they write don't reflect well on Uber.

I don't understand - you wrote the word "no" in front a sentence in complete agreement with me.

If I understand your argument, it's wrong for Uber to investigate and report true facts because you give them personal information (which presumably would not be used in this reporting) and because Uber speaks to the public and lobbies the government for redress of grievances? Could you explain why these activities somehow make investigating and reporting true facts somehow wrong?

(Your use of the term "forcibly alter" is, I assume, hyperbole. As far as I'm aware Uber has never used force against anyone, although it is often the victim of others who use force.)

What other activities causes one to lose one's (moral, if not legal) right to investigate and report true facts? If Sarah Lacy (for example) had an abortion, refused to allow soldiers to quarter in her house or refused to incriminate herself, would she then lose her (moral or ethical) right to investigate and report?

I agree with you that Pando has lost any claim of moral superiority and has done very despicable things.

I don't agree with you that "Pando did it" is a good excuse for someone else to do it too.

I do think that Uber is trying to position itself as a respectable company (they are asking people to trust them quite a bit, getting into their cars, giving them their data), not a hive of scum and villainy like Pando is, and they don't deserve to be considered a respectable company if they engage in the same despicable behavior Pando does.

You lose the moral high ground when you do disgusting things to other people. It doesn't matter if they do it too. You keep saying "reporting true facts" but this is not what's immoral, of course. It's immoral to make someone's private life public in retaliation for their public activity (I claim, and I think you'd agree or at least concede the point for the sake of this argument).

Forcibly alter was part hyperbole but also part not. Dumping huge amounts of lobbying money into small governments in order to change the laws to suit your business is political/economic force. Violence is not the only kind of 'forcing' that can be done. Hostile takeovers are not violent, but they are certainly forcible.

> why it's wrong to write the 4 most awful true things about Sarah Lacy, but it's perfectly fine to write the 4 most awful true facts about Travis Kalanick?

The article highlighted four direct quotes from Kalanick's interview with GQ magazine, not "the 4 most awful true facts about Travis Kalanick."

Do you understand the difference between digging up and exposing embarrassing personal details about a person and his or her family, and quoting what a person said in a magazine interview?

Do you believe it would be wrong for Gawker or Pando to publish the 4 most awful true facts about Travis Kalanick? E.g., leaked emails he wrote to a fraternity (as was done to Evan Spiegel)? Or perhaps reports by a third party that he was a great big jerk?

These are things that notable journalistic establishments do on a regular basis. I'm asking the same question that Emil Michael asked: why is it wrong to do the same thing to journalists?

Some journalists have written trashy gossip articles, and I wouldn't defend that.

But if that's his mindset, "Other people have done bad things, so why shouldn't I?", that's not great. That leads to a culture of decaying ethics, lowest-common-denominator behavioral norms, backstabbing and retribution, etc. And the stories we've heard about life at Uber become much more plausible.

If you have a principled objection to all such journalism, then it's fair to apply that same objection to Gawker, Pando and Uber alike. I don't agree with your premise, but you at least seem to be consistent.

But I don't think that Ben Smith (editor at Gawker, and the person Emil Michael was arguing with) could make the same objection without being a transparent hypocrite.

So Emil talks about spending millions on PR to discredit their critics, and then his journalist friend writes an article discrediting a critic and contradicting everything he said. Sorry if I'm a bit skeptical.

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